UK's Thelin Quoted in Washington Post

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 27, 2015) — University of Kentucky College of Education Professor John Thelin was recently quoted in a Friday, Jan. 23, Washington Post article titled, "Watch colleges spread across the country like confetti with this map that traces U.S. history."

In the article, Susan Svrluga examines an eCollegeFinder map visualization that tracks the growth of colleges offering four-year degrees. Svrluga says that the map gives a "vivid broad-brush look at the trend lines over time that historians have studied," and writes about the beginnings of colleges in the U.S., with Harvard College in 1636, and current trends of enrollment.

“We are a nation of college-builders,” said Thelin, who teaches educational policy studies and evaluation. Every new community wants the benefits and prestige of a college, he said. “It’s comparable to landing an NFL franchise; I recall the joy in Washington, D.C. when you got your major-league baseball team: It made you complete.”

After explaining the method eCollegeFinder used to create the map — using a list of four-year colleges from the U.S. Department of Education and eliminating online-only schools and those for which a founding date wasn't readily available — Svrluga goes on to comment on Thelin's expertise in the subject.

"But Thelin — who has so much expertise in this that he not only wrote a book, ' A History of American Higher Education' (Johns Hopkins University Press), but even, with a summer job in construction, helped build the University of California at Irvine — said the number of colleges is always a little fluid, since they close, merge, adapt."

To view the article, visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/01/23/watch-colleges-spread-across-the-country-like-confetti-with-this-map-that-traces-u-s-history/.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Harder, 859-323-2396, whitney.harder@uky.edu